BitGo announced today that co-founder Mike Belshe will replace Will O'Brien as acting CEO of the bitcoin security provider.

Calling the move "the best path forward", Belshe suggested that the transition was put in place by the BitGo's remaining founders, including both himself and Ben Davenport, and that O'Brien will continue working with the company as a strategic advisor.

Credits for Episode 200

If you're a developer, you might be interested in our Coins-for-Commits program. As the platform goes open source in the coming weeks we'd like as much help as possible and you'll earn 10,000LTBc per commit that is accepted. You can find the github repository here

We’re seeing a wide variety of startups build Bitcoin applications using our APIs. The four types of Bitcoin applications that are most clearly emerging worldwide to date are p2p tipping, cross-border payments, international microfinance and reputation platforms.

There are many other types of Bitcoin applications that we're excited about but haven’t seen consumers widely adopt yet. Here’s 10 ideas for Bitcoin startups that we would love to see more developers working on:

Identity- Distributed identity applications that give people control of their own identity, built on top of a distributed identity protocol (e.g. Open Name)

Attribution- Attribution applications that allow users to prove ownership of data, built on top of an attribution protocol

These ideas are intended to help stimulate thinking about what can be done with Bitcoin and the blockchain. We think its likely that some of the most successful Bitcoin applications will be ideas that we haven’t thought of yet and our goal is to support the next group of entrepreneurs by providing the infrastructure that makes it easy to build consumer and merchant-oriented Bitcoin applications.

With over 7000 developers now using the Coinbase APIs, we’re excited to see what new applications continue to emerge.

US retail giant Overstock has invested in blockchain technology specialist Peernova as part of its second tranche of Series A financing.

Formed through a merger between cloud mining contract provider CloudHashing and ASIC hardware designer HighBitcoin in early 2014, Peernova raised $8.6m in funding last December as it sought to accelerate its shift away from mining.

The Sidekik app, which is accepting bitcoin in its crowdfunding campaign, is intended to bring real-time accountability to law enforcement by streaming video and audio of encounters with police to Maidsafe.

The goal is to protect the integrity of evidence.

The app, which began its second stage of crowdfunding March 9, will do far more than just video and audio streaming. An army of attorneys is being built who will compete to be your representative if you happen to need them during an encounter with police. Sidekik seeks to connect attorneys with potential clients when they need legal representation the most.

The Sidekik team says there is an inherent power imbalance between law enforcement and civilians during these encounters, as “the vast majority of people do not know their rights well enough and tend to crumble under the pressure.”

Essential evidence also tends to be scarce, too often turning court testimony into a your-word-against-mine scenarios, which the Sidekik team believes tilts the balance of justice in favor of law enforcement.

The app is designed to gather as much relevant information as possible, including GPS location, audio and video, while calling licensed attorneys via video to deal with the encounter lawfully.

Concerns about data storage lead Martin to Maidsafe, a decentralized storage company currently in closed beta.

The value of decentralized storage

During an interview with Bitcoin Magazine, Martin expounded on the need for secure cloud storage of this sensitive information and the company’s relationship with Maidsafe.

“The concern is totally valid about having data centralized, any data,” Martin said. “It’s not just about being able to store video and making it so that whatever entity cannot hack into one server and destroy that video. It’s about a lot more than that; it is about contact lists, it’s about people’s confidential information.

“People get notices all the time from different companies that they do business with, such as credit card companies or maybe their schools, saying ‘Hey our servers got hacked, your Social Security number, your birth date, your name, someone has it,'” he said. “With Maidsafe that really is a thing of the past, there’s no more hacking that one server and grabbing all that data.”

Martin said he met Page Peterson of Maidsafe at Libertopia in San Diego last November and had his CTO Jessie Wallace talk to her about how Sidekik could use Maidsafe for the massive amounts of data that will be coming from the app.

“We’ll be storing the data on multiple secure servers, but those are centralized,” Martin said. “So we are also going to be working with Maidsafe … This is a perfect merger with them in terms of features. This way, there will not be one single place where the powers-that-be can go to and say ‘We don’t want that video released to the public.’”

What if the officer takes the phone?

The Sidekik app can also be configured to require a pin from both the user and the attorney to stop the phone from recording and streaming data once it has started.

Even if the officer takes and destroys the phone, Sidekik believes enough evidence would be gathered and stored in the cloud to show the nature of the encounter in court.

Stage of development

The first phase of funding ended late last year, enabling the development of the graphic user interface of the app, as well as feasibility studies and a blueprint of the full development of the complex software app.

Phase two, which would be funding the full development of the app, began earlier this month, and a variety of perks are available for crowdfunding supporters at Indiegogo. Those who contribute with bitcoin receive the same rewards for a contribution of 10 percent less.

To develop the app, Sidekik is working with Zco, one of the largest app development companies in the world.

A series of presentations follows, beginning with Gerald Cotten, CEO of QuadrigaCX. QuadrigaCX is a Canadian exchange that recently became the first publicly traded bitcoin exchange in the world.

Henry Chan, business technology analyst from Deloitte, then speaks about the value and the potential of the blockchain, followed by Mat Cybula of Cryptiv, who talks about how tipping can act as a gateway to the world of bitcoin.

Cybula is followed by Amber Scott, Chief AML Ninja at Outlier Solutions, who discusses the changing landscape of bitcoin regulation in Canada.

Tuesday’s segment will feature a panel discussion on “Bitcoin and the Future of Payments” moderated by William Mougayar of Startup Management. Panelists include Amber Scott, Adam Nanjee, and Jeff Coleman of Kryptokit.

Tune in on Wednesday for featured speaker, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Bitcoin evangelist and author of Mastering Bitcoin. Always entertaining and engaging, Antonopoulos spoke to the packed conference room of over 300 audience members about the inevitability of bitcoin acceptance by legacy institutions. Over the course of the two segments, Antonopoulos walks his audience through the banks’ “Seven Stages of Grief” as they come to grips with the fact that the old way of running things is coming to an end.

Decentral.tv will close out the week with two segments of follow-up questions for Antonopoulos from the audience. On Thursday and Friday’s installments, he will address topics such as scalability, security and adoption.

All episodes will air on decentral.tv at 3:00 pm EST. Past episodes will be available on the decentral.tv playlist.

Atlanta, GA (March 19, 2015) – The Loudermilk Conference Center in Atlanta is slated to host the 2015 Bitcoin Consumer Fair on the 18th of April. The event is geared toward both consumers and merchants who are interested in expanding the use of Bitcoin in the Atlanta area, as well as those interested in working on the business and technology side of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a form of digital currency which employs encryption techniques to regulate generation of currency units and verify transfer of funds. Bitcoin is not associated with and operates independently from any central bank.

“You can put a bank in your pocket. That’s pretty amazing,” said Gavin Andresen, Chief Scientist of The Bitcoin Foundation.

The purpose of the fair is to bring together consumers, merchants and payment companies to interact and facilitate the use of Bitcoin as a payment mechanism.

“Our goal is to reach a new audience for bitcoin,” said event co-organizer Jason Cronk. “We want to teach as many people as possible about its benefits and answer questions for people who may have heard about Bitcoin but don’t know that much about it.”

The event is the first of its kind in Atlanta. A full list of times and activities are available at the event website: bitcoinconsumerfair.com.

April 17 will launch with a reception to welcome visitors, vendors and exhibitors to the fair. The main portion of the event will be held on the 18th where visitors will have the chance to interact with vendors and exhibitors and hear from a list of guest speakers on various topics related to current trends and future expansion of Bitcoin. Event exhibitors will run the gambit from those providing information on Bitcoin to those actually selling various consumer items for Bitcoin.

The day starts with a free hash-brown breakfast and a food truck attending Saturday at lunch will offer a variety of options for hungry attendees, for sale for Bitcoin, of course.

The event closes with a Disco Dance Party to say goodbye to, as the New York Superintendent of Financial Services Benjamin M. Lawsky once called it, “a disco-era payment system.”

Atlanta was chosen as the first location for the Bitcoin Consumer Fair because of its large diverse population and the numerous financial technology companies that are either headquartered or have a strong presence within the city, according to Cronk. “There is an under served market in the traditional banking system. We want to highlight the benefits of using Bitcoin for both consumers and merchants,” he said.

When one is busy driving a technological and societal revolution forward, complying with complicated regulatory requirements is rarely a top priority. Yet, the reality is that at this stage the often ambigious and rapidly evolving regulatory landscape can have an outsized impact on the fate of cryptocurrency startups and on the adoption/integration into existing systems.

Epicenter Bitcoin Regulatory Correspondent and founder of COINsult Siƒn Jones joined us for an update on the state of Bitcoin regulation in a variety of jurisdiction.

Topics included:

The recent statement by the UK's treasury on digital currencies

How the Isle of Man keeps pioneering a cryptocurrency-friendly environment

The stance of the FATF (Financial Action Task Force) towards Bitcoin

The insanity of the looming BitLicense rules and difficult-to-predict consequences they may have

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has taken note of the issues hindering partnerships between bitcoin businesses and banks.

At a Brussels meeting with industry figures last Friday, the anti-money laundering policy maker proposed a risk-based approach that ensures every digital currency business is evaluated on an individual basis.

A risk-based approach means that banks identify and assess the money laundering and terrorist financing risks they are exposed to, setting the appropriate mitigation measures accordingly.

We've all witnessed the ever-intensifying discussion regarding freedom of (online) speech, protection -- or the lack therof -- of our identities, and various governments' control over the internet; issues that involve all citizens of this planet, not just us involved in cryptocurrencies. Regarding all this, Dandiscusses"Citizenfour," a documentary concerning Edward Snowden and the NSA spying scandal. If you haven't seen the documentary yet, it is well worth your time.

In his new podcast, Arthur's plan is to explore Darkmarkets, Anarchism, Cypherpunks, and Identity Systems, among many other topics. As the show is still a work in progress, Arthur is looking for your input. If you have ideas for a name for his podcast, a topic, or an interview subject, make sure to drop him a line on the LTB forums. Arthur, we all look forward to getting your show back on the front page!

In another thread, William asks questions about Factom's crowdfunding effort. Factom's project page explains that "businesses and governments can use Factom to simplify records management, record business processes, and address security and compliance issues."

In case it is not obvious already: When it comes to any kind of crowdfunding, let alone in the cryptocurrency space, buyer beware! Also, the mention of these crowdsales is not an endorsement by LTB. Do your due diligence!

The Securities and Exchange Comission (SEC) has previously applied old regulations to cryptocurrency crowdfunding, forcing projects to either spend large sums of money for legal opinion in order to follow the regulations designed for legacy currency and securities, or hope that SEC won't target them for selling a token (security) for bitcoins (currency).

A recent SEC ruling, while not entirely clarifying the subject, makes things a bit easier. The SEC has set a cap of US$50 million that can be raised through non-accredited investors like you and me. A cryptocurrency project or company seeking crowdfunding is still required to register the sale of the token, or the "security," as the SEC sees it. However, the cost of the registration process is much lower than before. So the projects or companies that wish to play by the rules set by the SEC can now do it much more cheaply.

Morgan has setup a project called BlockDev. BlockDev aims to be a hub for "blockchain apps created by the blockchain community." If you have skills in leadership and management, coding, UX/UI design, writing, or social media management, among many others, BlockDev is looking for you! You can join the BlockDev ranks here.

Buying a home can be a daunting task. Imagine throwing in some bitcoins and cloud mining in to the mix! That's exactly what Tim is embarking on. He is using cloud mining to supplement his mortgage payment with bitcoins. You can follow the process on Tim's blog. We've all probably realized by now the only bitcoin mining that is in any way profitable is done on an industrial scale. The requirement for the bitcoin mining math to really work is to have hundreds, if not thousands, of ASIC miners humming in data centers and warehouses, like on this video by Motherboard. So is Tim's goal to "bring in 5 BTC each month to apply to the mortgage" via cloud mining probable, possible, or impossible?

For our personal entertainment, Ahmad is drawing up some Bitcoin related manga. If you like his work, and feel generous, why not leave him an LTBcoin tip! You can follow the full comic strip here.

'Omnibus' has a nice write up of Joe's LTB Companion Wallet (Chrome extension). If you'd like to check out the wallet source code, or contribute to Joe's already excellent work, go to Joe's GitHub page.

Houston, we have a problem. We need more cutting edge tech entrepreneurs.

Luckily there’s a new space in Houston, Texas, built just for that, provided by Cryptospaces, which is backed by bitcoin consulting company, FinalHash. Located at 6907 Almeda Rd., the Houston Bitcoin Embassy is an incubator/ coworking space dedicated to tech startups. There are also plans to install a bitcoin ATM in the facility by the end of April.

The Embassy is home to the Texas Coinitiative, a non-profit organization that promotes the use of Bitcoin in Texas.

The Coinitiative mission statement reads:

“We believe that our growing community will help to shape progress in this field. Come network with traders, entrepreneurs and innovators working in one of the most interesting sociological and technological innovations in recent times.”

The Texas Coinitiative hosts several meetups — at least one meet-up each week — including the Houston Bitcoin meetup, an Ethereum meetup and an upcoming Houston Bit Business meetup: a meeting place specifically designed for Bitcoin entrepreneurs.

The Texas Coinitiative invites speakers once or twice a month and is always looking for new speakers. Some of the speakers they’ve recently hosted include Bitcoin Core developer, Peter Todd; Changetip CEO, Nick Sullivan; and Ziftr CEO, Bob Wilkins.

“The city of Houston is still very early in adoption phases in terms of Bitcoin,” says Adam Richard, president and co-founder of the Texas Coinitiative. “There aren’t many merchants that accept bitcoin here. We want to help grow that.”

The Embassy is also spearheading an educational project led by Jay Campuzano of Yo Soy Bitcoin, a series of educational video courses on Bitcoin for beginners in both English and Spanish.

In order to grow, the Texas Coinitiative is looking for sponsors.

“The help from sponsors,” says Richard, “will be used for anything from food and drinks for events to printing of educational materials; all for the purpose of education and inspiring others to become more involved in the Houston Bitcoin ecosystem.”

The Houston Bitcoin Embassy currently has vacancies for anyone interested in an incubation/ coworking space.

The Texas Coinitiative will have a booth at tomorrow’s upcoming Texas Bitcoin Conference. It encourages attendees to visit the booth and talk to any of its representatives there.

“We want to put Houston on the map in the Bitcoin space,” says Richard. “Houston has a lot going on that people don’t realize. There are currently 12 local Bitcoin startups in the city.”

The Houston Bitcoin Embassy is open Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

For more information about the Houston Bitcoin Embassy, visit their website, send them an email, or sign up to attend the Houston Bitcoin meetup at meetup.com.

Credits for Episode 199

If you're a developer, you might be interested in our Coins-for-Commits program. As the platform goes open source in the coming weeks we'd like as much help as possible and you'll earn 10,000LTBc per commit that is accepted. You can find the github repository here

Bitcoin airtime merchant, Bitrefill, has partnered with New York-based Bitcoin exchange Celery to enable bitcoin remittances of phone minutes to more than 100 countries – without the sender ever having to touch the digital currency.

“The integration uses all of the benefits of Bitcoin but hides the complexities from the user, just uses Bitcoin as settlement rails,” said Celery CEO IIya Subkhankulov.

The process does not require a user to buy bitcoin or handle the digital currency. Airtime purchases made from Celery’s exchange take the money straight from the person’s bank account, similar to the process of buying bitcoin.

In addition, Bitrefill is eliminating fees for airtime remittances to India. The U.S.-India corridor contributes largely to the $70 billion worth of remittances that flow into the Asian country each year.

A Proven Model

Ismail Ahmed, founder and CEO of WorldRemit, toldMobile World Live in 2014, that informal airtime remittances could make nearly half of the $40 billion worth of remittances that flow into Africa each year.

Ahmed made that comment shortly after raising $40 million from Accel Partners and others in a Series A Round, so his money transfer company could pursue airtime and other remittance services.

Airtime remittances are particularly valuable for people sending amounts of money worth under $20. According to TransferTo‘s CEO Eric Barbier, that’s the “sweet spot” for the unconventional money transfer. Remittance companies charge too much to make remittances of such a small amount possible, but airtime services’ low fees make it a viable option.

In many parts of the world, airtime minutes are not only serving as an informal money transfer system, but also as actual money. According to the Economist, in places such as Haiti, Zimbabwe and Egypt, airtime minutes are used to buy things such as gasoline, water and electricity.

According to Hannes Van Rensburg, Visa’s head of their sub-Saharan Africa division, airtime as money is particularly popular in countries where rigid regulatory schemes have made it very difficult for banks to offer new kinds of electronic money.

Even places such as Kenya, where mobile money such as M-Pesa is extremely popular, airtime as money has found a use case. Airtime minutes’ relatively stable price serves as a better store of value than the Kenyan shilling, causing people to hold airtime minutes rather than shillings.

Bitcoin’s UX Problem

A lot has been said about how non-user-friendly bitcoin can be, but according to Bitrefill CEO and co-founder, Sergej Kotliar, it’s really bad. During an interview with Bitcoin Magazine, Kotliar said users in many countries remain confused how to use bitcoin when paying for Bitrefill’s service.

“They had to be walked, step by step, through the process,” he said.

The partnership with Celery will allow users to take advantage of Bitrefill’s cheaper rates and convenience, while never having to touch the rather confusing digital currency.

After signing in, Celery users will see a “Phone Refill” feature toward the bottom of the screen. The user then chooses the amount he or she wants and clicks “Purchase.” The same amount is deducted from the customer’s bank account by Celery, which sends the order for airtime minutes to Bitrefill. The recipient receives the airtime a few seconds later.

But overcoming Bitcoin’s UX problem is just one of the steps the company is taking to reach its grander goal.

“We want to connect the worlds of prepaid and bitcoin. For bitcoin to be used by developing countries, they need to be able to spend it,” said Kotliar. “You can’t exchange bitcoin easily in the developing world, but you can spend airtime easily.”

Full-Fledged Startup

“As Westerners, we didn’t realize how much of the world used prepaid phones. It’s actually the way the majority of the world receives their phone minutes and data,” said Kotliar.

Bitrefill launched in October as a side product for its two co-founders, Kotliar and Aleksandra Derikonja. But a month after launching the service, the company received a lot of interest from the press and, subsequently, from users.

That provoked Kotliar and Derikonja to think more deeply about the prospects of bitcoin in the prepaid airtime industry. After researching the industry more, they discovered that a bitcoin-powered airtime service could solve issues of convenience, price and more.

Bitrefill is headquartered in San Mateo, California, as part of the Bitcoin startup accelerator program Boost VC. They are using the opportunity to further develop their business and to network with other Bitcoin companies.

In the upcoming year, the company will be signing deals with exchanges in Europe and then other parts of the globe. They wish to bring the same “bitcoin-in-the-background experience” to more countries around the world.

The Bitcoin airtime merchant also will be releasing an API that will allow any Bitcoin business to integrate Bitrefill into its website.

Jared Marx is an attorney at Washington, DC law firm Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis. He advises companies about bitcoin-related regulatory law and represents companies and individuals in civil and criminal proceedings.

Here, he discusses why a new securities ruling is a potential boon for 'crypto 2.0' and 'bitcoin 2.0' companies operating in the US.

On Wednesday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted regulations permitting crowdfunding for business startups.